Hoist the Colours High: Reassessing the Digital Services Act in a Liberal Democratic Europe
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2025 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | This paper explores how legal responsibility for content moderation is being reshaped by the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), focusing on the principle of proportionality and its role in legitimising platform governance. Drawing on a comparative study based on questionnaire responses from legal rapporteurs across several EU member states, the paper examines how procedural safeguards such as notice and takedown systems, and the requirement in Article 17 for clear statements of reasons, are applied in practice. Although the DSA presents itself as a protective framework intended to harmonise digital regulation in the interest of transparency and accountability, its implementation reveals uneven oversight, selective enforcement, and growing opacity. Platforms frequently become the de facto arbiters of legality, often issuing generic justifications without meaningful avenues for contestation. What appears to be a legal safeguard may function instead as a symbolic gesture that conceals discretion and reproduces asymmetries of power. From a critical legal studies perspective, the paper argues that the DSA reinforces a technocratic model of regulation in which procedural compliance is prioritised over democratic accountability. Proportionality, rather than acting as a substantive check, becomes part of a legal performance that lends legitimacy to private control. Reassessing digital regulation through this lens means asking who is empowered to speak, who is subject to moderation, and whether the law can still serve as a tool of resistance within increasingly enclosed digital environments. |
| Related projects: |